Question: Daniel is 5 times as old as Vanessa and is also 24 years older than Vanessa. How old is Daniel?
Answer: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Daniel and Vanessa. Let Daniel's current age be $d$ and Vanessa's current age be $v$ $d = 5v$ $d = v + 24$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $d$ is to solve the second equation for $v$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $v$ , we get: $v = d - 24$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $d = 5$ $(d - 24)$ which combines the information about $d$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $d = 5d - 120$ Solving for $d$ , we get: $4 d = 120$ $d = 30$.